


Time Not Exactly Wasted, But Not Well Spent

by donutsweeper



Category: Jake 2.0
Genre: Boredom, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8510617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: Jake was bored. Fortunately for him, Kyle was nearby. Whether or not Kyle considered that to be a good thing was another matter entirely.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HopefulNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/gifts).



> Thanks to the awesome JadisLeFeu for the beta!

Jake had seven analyses, five decryptions, two cracks and three hacks all to complete before he could leave for the day. It was an insane amount of work, enough for an entire unit of unenhanced agents, really. But for him? It was time consuming to an extent, but boring. So very boring.

Reaching out, he worked his way through the building's systems to Kyle's webcam. It wasn't on, and with the newest system upgrades in place it was supposed to be inaccessible unless the computer's registered user purposely opened a specific program to activate it, but Jake was Jake and getting around that kind of technology was child's play to him. He caught Kyle just as the other man was returning to his desk with a fresh cup of coffee- dark roast with skim milk with its typical 8:1 ratio and 2 ounces sugar that had been poured in but improperly stirred with the pen he was shaking dry. 

Jake grinned and shook his head. "When are you going to remember to keep a spoon at your desk? Never, most likely," he murmured as he created and submitted an order for a package of plastic cutlery to be included in the next delivery of office supplies to Kyle's office while he debated how he wanted to contact Kyle, what he wanted to say, and the best way to make the whole exchange interesting.

Kyle had just sat down when Jake took over his system, making the computer screen flicker, brightening for a moment before going dark. Once he had Kyle's attention (and, wow, that 'damn it, Jake, what are you doing now' glare was starting to get pretty intense) he made a blinking cursor appear in the middle of the screen. 

"Jake?" It never ceased to amaze him how Kyle could make his name sound like both a question and a curse all at the same time.

Following the cursor was a dash, then another and then another. Eventually his message filled the entire screen.

**\----- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- / ----- .---- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- .---- / ----- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- .---- .---- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- ----- .---- .---- .---- / ----- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- ----- / ----- .---- .---- .---- ----- .---- ----- ----- / ----- ----- .---- .---- .---- .---- .---- .----**

Kyle glared at him through the camera. "Morse code, Jake?" he scoffed, plunking down his coffee. He reached over to grab a pencil and some notepaper and began jotting down the message. "Yes, I know what you're thinking. He's using pen and paper? How quaint."

Jake had actually been about to make some sort of dinosaur crack, but that was neither here nor there.

Kyle seemed to have no trouble deciphering the first layer of the message. Zooming in, Jake could see Kyle writing out its opening of 'zero one zero one zero zero zero zero' before groaning scrubbing his hand over his face. "What on earth…. Is this binary?"

After making a vague attempt at clearing the screen by clicking his mouse a few times (like Jake's control of his computer would be thwarted by such a simple action), Kyle pulled out his cellphone and opened up a browser window. However, because it wasn't any harder to infiltrate a smart phone than a computer, Kyle got no further than typing 'bina' into the search engine before Jake nixed the action, causing the entire thing to power down. 

Jake supposed he could just active a video chat so they could talk face to face but instead he pushed the Morse message further up the screen and added a new one below it.

**NO CHEATING**

Kyle turned toward the webcam and raised his eyebrows, obviously attempting to give Jake the best 'really?' look he could muster. It was a pretty good one, all things considered, but that didn't stop Jake from sending another message.

#  **I SAID NO CHEATING ******

"I don't know what you want me to do, Jake. I don't know binary, so unless I look it up—"

##  **WHICH IS CHEATING**

"You say potato, etcetera, etcetera. Didn't you have about twenty different high priority projects assigned to you today?" 

####  **I DID**

**but**

#### I'M BORED

"So, you're finished with all of them?"

Well….

**SORT OF?**

"I know you find that kind of work less than stimulating, but it's vital to the efficacy of this agency, Jake."

And that was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? These kind of assignments were important, and he knew that, but they were so tedious and dull it was hard for him to spend more than a few hours on them at a time before he wanted to fabricate some sort of international incident just to have something more exciting to do. 

"Diane will be back from her conference soon enough, but until then, you know as well as I the dangers of going out in the field without adequate support. Unless you're trying to suggest she's not a valued member of the team? And if that's the case I, for one, want to be there when you tell her that because I'm pretty sure she's going to do that thing where she assures you everything's fine and doesn't cry but she's blinking really hard and looks like her entire world has fallen apart around her." Kyle, because he's an evil, evil man, sat back in his chair after that little comment and sipped his coffee, looking at the webcam like he could watch Jake through it and see the moment when Jake would (and did) sigh, capitulating to the inevitable. Which he did, because, damn it, Kyle was right on all counts and there was no way he could do that to Diane.

#  **I HATE YOU**

Kyle laughed at that and raised his mug in salute. Which seemed a little smug in Jake's opinion, but all things considered, Jake couldn't begrudge him too much for that.

"So am I getting my computer back any time today, or should I just write the rest of the afternoon off?"

Oh, right. Jake reset Kyle's system back to its normal settings, like he'd never been in it (other than his clearing the machine's history because no one needed to know that Kyle had watched that particular cat video that many times) and turned his phone back on. 

"Thank you!" Jake was about to flick the webcam's light on and off in his typical sign of goodbye when Kyle spoke up again, asking, "So, what kind of toppings do you want on that pizza?"

Wait, what? Kyle hadn't used a website translator, hadn't pulled out any resource materials, hadn't even tried to work out the binary on his own. Did he have some other device he was using on the sly? Jake quickly scanned Kyle's office but found no atypical electronic signatures, so that wasn't it. Then how did he—

"I wish I could see your face right now. You're probably trying to come up with one implausible explanation after another to try to figure out how I cracked this." He waved his Morse code scribblings in the air and smirked at the webcam.

Jake waited, but all Kyle did was put down the paper and open up the budget reports he'd been working on before his coffee break and Jake's little computer hijacking. Which was all well and good, it was work that needed to be done and lord knows Jake didn't want to do it, but it did nothing to explain how Kyle translated that message. Was he ignoring him? He was, wasn't he? Oh no, that was not allowed; Jake had to _know._

Activating the camera in Kyle's phone but cutting power to the rest of the room did the trick. Plunged into darkness, Kyle's smile immediately fell. "You better have backed up anything I didn't have a chance to save, Jake Foley!" he shouted.

Jake began having the phone buzz out dash dash dash dash dot dash dash dash in the start of a new, similarly encoded message when Kyle, extremely and scarily calmly, said, "Jake, Lou is expecting these reports and expecting them on time. What do you think she'll say if I have to explain why they're late? In fact, she's just down the hall. I can go right now and—"

It was probably an empty threat, but Jake was not a stupid man and wasn't willing to risk it so he quickly returned the office to its typical state.

"That's better."

"That's better," Jake mimicked before curiosity got the better of him and he sent the same message as a boring old unencoded text to Kyle's phone.

Kyle took his time responding to the 'text received' chirp. So much time in fact, that Jake managed to finish two of the decryptions and the final step of the last crack.

"How did you figure it out?" Kyle read out loud before snorting and turning to the webcam. "Jake, I took an educated guess. As an NSA agent, the ability to use contextual clues to form educated guesses has kept me alive in the past. I know that you always bore easily when we're between assignments and when you're bored you tend to think of food. I also know that we've talked about going out for pizza a couple of times recently, but things have always come up at the last minute to derail our plans. So, I put one and one together and, combining it with what I know of binary and that the message itself had to be short as a result, assumed you asked me about getting together and having pizza for dinner or something along those lines."

Jake found himself nodding as Kyle spelled out his assumptions and how he reached the conclusion he did. Damn the man, it was actually pretty clever work. He hadn't translated the message per se, but Kyle had managed to deduce its meaning anyway, so Jake couldn't fault him for that. 

Texting the original message to Kyle's phone, Jake waited until Kyle was looking at it before having each symbol morph from Morse into its binary counterpart before becoming its Latin alphabet equivalent, eventually revealing his question of 'Pizza tonight?' and couldn't help but grin when Kyle laughed.

"You are persistent, I'll give you that. Sure, sounds good. I should get out of here on time today if you actually let me get back to this any time soon. So… my place at seven?"

Because he couldn't help being a little shit sometimes, Jake took over Kyle's computer again.

####  **73 6f 75 6e 64 73 20 67 6f 6f 64**

"Jake." It was impressive how long Kyle managed to drag out his name sometimes.

**That was hexadecimal for 'sounds good'**

** Sorry **

**I couldn't resist**

"Just for that you're paying." Kyle wagged his finger at the webcam. Then, pointing at the screen, added, "Now, if you don't mind?"

Jake returned everything to its normal settings yet again, letting Kyle get back to his reports, and winked the webcam's light in goodbye. He actually had to buckle down and get back to work himself if he wanted to finish everything he needed to so he could meet Kyle tonight, so fabricating an international incident would have to wait for the moment.

Besides, there was always tomorrow.


End file.
